1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications services. More particularly, the present invention relates to capabilities that enhance substantially the value and usefulness of various messaging paradigms including, inter alia, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), etc.
2. Background of the Invention
As the ‘wireless revolution’ continues to march forward the importance to a Mobile Subscriber (MS)—for example a user of a Wireless Device (WD) such as a mobile telephone, a BlackBerry, etc. that is serviced by a Wireless Carrier (WC)—of their WD grows substantially.
One consequence of the growing importance of WDs is the resulting ubiquitous nature of WDs—i.e., MSs carry them at almost all times and use them for an ever-increasing range of activities.
Over the past many years that ubiquitousness has driven a steady annual increase, year over year, in the number of (SMS, MMS, etc.) messages that have been exchanged by and between WDs. That steady increase shows no sign of abating. For example, as reported by the industry group CTIA (see the world wide web site ctia.org) in the U.S. there were over 158 billion SMS messages sent during 2006 (representing a 95% increase over 2005) and there were over 2.7 billion MMS messages sent during 2006 (representing a 100% increase over 2005).
As the volume of messaging has increased in the past, and at present continues to increase, it has become more and more important for all of the different entities that process messages—e.g., WCs, intermediaries, enterprises, Content Providers (CPs), Service Providers (SPs), etc.—to route messages in the most flexible and efficient manner possible.
In the past the routing of a message was fairly rigid and may have consisted of examining just the destination address (e.g., the destination Telephone Number [TN]) of the message. Today and in the future the routing of a message needs to operate in as optimal a fashion as possible, needs to be much more flexible, and needs to take into account many more elements (beyond just, for example, a destination TN)—all to support, possibly inter alia, very large volumes of messaging, numerous billing paradigms, different Quality of Service [QoS] levels and possible charges for same, improved troubleshooting and problem investigation capabilities, etc.
The challenges that were described above highlight the need for an innovative infrastructure that offers, as part of the natural evolution, maturation, etc. of a wireless messaging ecosystem, enhanced message routing capabilities.
The present invention provides such an infrastructure and addresses various of the (not insubstantial) challenges that are associated with same.